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Tedgale trip report: One glorious week in London, February, 2015

Tedgale trip report: One glorious week in London, February, 2015

Old Feb 19th, 2015, 06:59 AM
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Tedgale trip report: One glorious week in London, February, 2015

This will be a long, fact-laden report. I've used sub-heads for ease of reading and I will post in instalments. Here's my first bit.
Opening text seems a bit leaden to me. I will try to speed it up and liven it up from here on:

We have just returned from a week-long trip to London (Feb 9-17, 2015) -- a very successful holiday and the renewal of a long dormant love affair with a city I last saw two decades ago.
As this city is so frequently written up, I will make my report selective. My reports tend to the dry and factual -- no gush about "to-die-for" desserts I ate or the cute puppy that licked my hand outside Harrods. I'll try to focus on information that may be useful to other travellers preparing a visit.
I'll start with the background:
We are an older Canadian married couple, ages 62 and 71 -- frequent travelers interested in history, art and eating, who appreciate quality but always scrutinize the value-for-money ratio.
We winter in Savannah GA but pried ourselves away from the 70 F weather for a compelling personal reason: To attend the memorial service for my late sister-in-law, who died in a domestic accident only a few months after she and my brother moved to London from NYC.
Though the trip had a sombre beginning, we were resolved to have some good times with family and we succeeded admirably.

Flight booking: We traveled using Aeroplan points accumulated on Air Canada. As United Airlines seems to be the sole US-based Star Alliance member, we were compelled to fly UA from Savannah to London, making connections at Dulles in Washington.
On the outbound journey, we chose the late-evening flight (10 PM) so that we would arrive at 10 AM. (The other option was to arrive around 5:45 AM which, given the time change, means a sleepless night and an arrival shortly after midnight, East-coast time.) Since flights from SAV to IAD are few, this meant a six-hour layover at IAD, which we used to grab dinner with my younger brother and his wife near their Vienna, VA home.
I had read enough reviews of UA in general and its Boeing 777 refit in particular to be prepared for crummy service and a less than comfortable ride. To mitigate this, we chose to fly Business class -- 90,000 points instead of 60,000. Considering the cash value of a Business class ticket is approximately 4X the price of an Economy ticket, this seems a bargain.
When you fly to and from the US, the additional taxes and fees for a Business class flight are about $400 Canadian (20% less in USD). If you fly transatlantic from Canada or even if you fly from the US but change planes in Canada, your fees skyrocket: they can go as high as $1500 for a Business class flight.
...Which is probably why we had such a huge balance of points to begin with. There is absolutely no way I'd fly from Canada to Europe on an economy ticket purchased with points. Buying a Canadian seat-sale ticket is almost as cheap as flying on points and it gives you far, far greater selection of flights and carriers.
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 07:05 AM
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Some more throat-clearing and air travel stuff:

Dulles airport: Dulles is not my favourite airport. It was quiet on the night of our late-evening departure but clogged on our return. Security is sometimes intrusive and unsmiling. Immigration and Customs went quickly on our return but there was a lot of confused milling about by travelers -- far more than I'm used to at Canadian airports.
Spaces in the airport are Gargantuan when they don't need to be (there is a lot of walking) but cramped where the crowds must congregate. The UA Club Lounges in C Terminal are every bit as crummy and poorly-supplied as the online reviews predicted. I've never seen such a Spartan lounge in any Canadian airport.

Flights: Our flight to London left promptly and arrived ahead of time. The aircraft for our return flight was late arriving, so we departed 50 minutes late but recouped some of that time en route.
In both directions, the actual flight was surprisingly pleasant and unstressful. The Business class interior has "shell" seats, fully reclinable to a lie-flat position. They are a bit narrow but otherwise very comfortable. They are arranged 2 -4 -2, so it could be unpleasant to be a solo traveler with an inside seat: you really do have to climb over your neighbour's legs, especially if his/her seat is extended. If you are considering flying this plane, SeatGuru has useful suggestions for seat selection.
Meals were good, as was the in-flight entertainment. Cabin crew varied a bit in skill and demeanour. We got none of the widely reported "attitude" from UA crew, who all were pleasant even when they were not terribly polished.

Heathrow Airport: We flew into and out of the new Terminal 2, used for all UA and AIr Canada flights. UA was the first occupant of the new terminal, with the result that their operations there, including the Lounges, are now fully broken-in.
Terminal 2 is vast and the distance from the arrival gate to the main terminal is inexplicably huge. Apart from that, I found the terminal a pleasure to use. It is sparkling in its newness. At 10 AM on arrival and departure days, I saw no bottlenecks anywhere. Check-in areas have abundant self-service machines.
I was most impressed that, when we entered the main terminal and were looking for the UA Arrivals Lounge, a uniformed airport "greeter" came up to ask what we were looking for. He then walked with us until he could point out the Lounge's entrance.
From the blurbs I had read online, the UA Arrivals Lounge sounded quite special. The Lounge, to which Air Canada passengers may also have access, is indeed a little haven of gentility for weary travelers. I mostly wanted a shower. Their private bathrooms are immaculate and are staffed by motherly Englishwomen who treat you very kindly. There is a hatch in the bathroom door where you can place clothes to be pressed while you occupy the bathroom. There was also a full breakfast buffet with a wide variety of food I was already too stuffed to sample.
The contrast with the Dulles lounges was like night and day.
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 07:13 AM
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Looking forward to reading about your week!
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 07:38 AM
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Travel to London -- Getting our Oyster cards: With assistance from experienced Fodors travelers, I worked through all the intricacies of PAYG (and daily zonal capping) versus travel cards. I concluded what thousands have apparently concluded before me:

1. Do not buy a Visitor Oyster card before departure.

2. Do not buy a paper travel pass from British Rail unless you are really, really committed to the idea of 2-for-1 museum entries (The very greatest museums are free anyway).

3. If you are staying 4 days or more, load your Oyster card with a one-week Zone 1 and 2 travel pass at time of purchase.

4. Calculate in advance -- if you can -- what you'll need for travel outside Zones 1 and 2 and add some PAYG cash to your card to cover that. You can select any desired amount at time of purchase -- thereafter, you can only make purchases in units of 5 GBP. If you are traveling by Tube from LHR to the centre, you will need to add 1.50 GBP for a ride in off-peak hours, 2.80 GBP for peak-hour travel e.g. prior to 9:30 AM, if you arrive on an early morning flight.

We needed one off-peak and one peak-hour Heathrow trip plus an off-peak return to Hampton Court on SW Rail (priced separately from Underground fares -- it was 2.40 GBP each way).

The agent at Heathrow station was rather disgusted with us for wanting to load exactly 9.10 GBP on each card. He wanted to sell us 12 GBP, telling us that any leftover cash would be remitted to us when we surrendered our cards on departure. A fair point -- but I wasn't sure we'd get round to surrendering our cards and collecting our money.

An oddity: When we took the train from Waterloo to Hampton Court, we failed to "tap" our cards on exiting the train station at our destination. (It was obscurely placed and I forgot.) When we made our return journey, the balance shown when we "tapped" on entry and then on exiting Waterloo suggested that the outbound trip simply hadn't registered at all. Our credit balance was 2.40 GBP higher than it should have been.

On our last day, we travelled back to LHR by Tube -- off-peak, not during peak hours as planned and paid for. The machine at the station exit said our card was "almost exhausted" or some such phrase, when I expected a balance of at least 2.40 GBP (and probably more, given that we'd traveled off-peak to LHR).

Whatever.... The pass was both convenient and cost-effective; the travel experience -- even to and from Heathrow -- was painless in the (relatively) quiet off-peak hours; and with only carry-on luggage, the stairs in our arrival and departure stations (Embankment and S Kensington) were not an insuperable problem.

Thanks to janisj for suggesting changing trains at Hammersmith station on our inbound trip from LHR to Embankment station -- that worked brilliantly.
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 07:38 AM
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I am sorry to hear that those officials at Dulles were intrusive and did not have happy faces on.
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 07:48 AM
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but I am pleased that LHR terminal 2 shone in comparison!

loving the details, Tegale - keep it coming.
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 08:39 AM
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I will describe our accommodation next.

Accommodation: After experiencing sticker shock from our initial research into central London hotels, we decided to look into Air BnB. I quickly became a big fan. They have a wide array of properties, some quite lavish. They can denominate the prices in any currency. Yes, they add about 2.5% above the market rate when they make the conversion -- but my credit card provider charges just as much if I make a purchase in a foreign currency.

Most properties have a good number of verified reviews. You can also find out quite a bit about the owner from his/her online profile. It is far more personal and far less anonymous than VRBO or a rental agency. That is a plus for some, a minus for others, I suppose.

The "map search" function on the Air BnB website also makes searching tremendously simple if -- as I did -- you know the city and know exactly where you want to stay.

In sum, Air BnB seemed to me on all points superior (provided you find a good owner) to agencies I've used on past holidays. And we qualified for a time-limited online Travelzoo offer of a discount to first-time Canadian users of Air BnB: It ended up saving us about $50/day on our two bookings.

We chose a two-centred holiday:

1. Three nights in a one-bedroom flat in Craven Street, just off the Strand near Trafalgar Square -- for access to the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Courtauld Gallery, Sir John Soane Museum and places east of there.

2. Three nights in a studio flat (with Murphy bed -- an innovation I greatly approve of, as I like a firm bed) in Egerton Gardens, Knightsbridge, to be close to family: my brother's office at Imperial College, his Kensington flat and my sister and BiL's hotel at Gloucester Road tube station. It was 2 minutes from the Victoria and Albert museum and 15-20 minutes' walk from Kensington Palace. Harrods, a Mecca for many tourists (though not for me), was visible in the distance when you emerged from the flat onto the main road.

In both cases, pre-arrival communications with the owners were swift, cordial and very helpful. Check in and departure were effortless. The properties were immaculately clean and abundantly stocked with essentials, including both food and toiletries.

Here are some photos of the two places we chose:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...1&l=112d292929
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 08:58 AM
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"Do not buy a paper travel pass from British Rail unless you are really, really committed to the idea of 2-for-1 museum entries"

I wouldn't be that dogmatic.

The price structure for Travelcards isn't quite the same as PAYG on Oysters. But the "travel only" prices on each work out more advantageous for some, and less advantageous for others: for most people, it's about precisely how many days you're going to use it.

But you pay no more for the Travelcard 2for1: I can't imagine many visitors don't see at least one paid-for attraction - and, though most visiting is to free attractions, our admission fees, when they apply, are often eye-wateringly high.

For almost everyone, just one visit to the Abbey or Tower will wipe out any saving their particular travel pattern would offer on Oyster PAYG - and for about half our visitors the Travecard will offer cheaper travel than PAYG.
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 11:02 AM
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General impressions of London: My partner and I both visited London a lot when young: my first solo visit was in 1970, at age 17. My partner was at school in London in the early '60s and we both developed an enduring fondness for the place.

The London I remembered from the '70s -- and even from the Thatcher years -- was often dirty and bleak, with a sharp divide between haves and have-nots. Returning after an absence of almost 20 years, we expected to see a lot of changes. We'd read about London prices (which may explain our two-decade absence)... about how dynamic and diverse London has become ....about Boris Johnson's determination to transform London into a global capital of brain-based capitalism (his press statement related to my brother's new job referred to "cementing London's position as the intellectual capital of the world")

I'm going to record a few of my impressions from this brief exposure, aware that I may be slammed for my presumption or insensitivity in airing unlettered views ...and ridiculed for misunderstanding a very ancient and very complex urban culture. I emphasize that these are impressions only -- and just one person's impressions at that.

The first thing that struck both of us was how clean everything was and how free of garbage and graffiti. No North American city I have visited comes anywhere close to this.
Maintenance is clearly a high priority, too: buildings, squares and parks seem buffed and manicured.

As a corollary, the state of public infrastructure, especially transport infrastructure, must impress any North American. I never saw, even when traveling far from the centre, the dilapidation that we Canadians all take for granted.

The amount of green space is staggering. Even in Central Park, the biggest city park I know, you cannot be as alone as you can be in central London. There are so many byways and backwaters, yards and alleys, that offer silence and the prospect of intimacy and repose.

I had forgotten the visual grandeur of London. It is not confined to the 19th century monuments from the heyday of Empire: Kensington Palace, Whitehall and Somerset House predate all that. Moreover, it is grandeur without the grandiosity that mars both Paris and Washington, to my eyes. Now that the grime of decades has at last been cleaned away, the effect of all this richness on the viewer is dazzling.

I remembered Londoners as surly, with the manner of a union shop-steward and a constant, whingeing air of grievance. But on this visit, we were both impressed by the high level of public civility and courtesy in our various transactions. Well-spoken strangers who stopped to ask if we needed directions, for example. Or the helpful staff that seemed to abound in museums and galleries. Or the smoothly deferential serving staff in restaurants (none of whom was British-born, however).

I was also struck by how racially homogeneous central London looks. I had expected a lot of diversity. There may be, in the areas I have not seen. And I realize that many of the people around me were not natives but recent arrivals from other corners of Europe.

My US winter home is a majority African-American city. The largest city in my home province of Ontario is now majority non-white ...and majority foreign-born. To me, London still looks the way my hometown looked when I was a kid. I had read about the UKIP and wondered: "Why? What are they on about?"

Much of the city's core residential areas -- which still seemed vital to me in the '80s -- now seem depopulated and devoid of life. The most extreme examples are Mayfair and St James's, which had pretty much ceased to be "neighbourhoods" even when I knew London first. But when we walked in Bloomsbury and my partner re-visited the streets he knew in his youth, he commented on how the place seemed "hollowed out". Even the shops don't seem to support a surrounding community but rather to cater to tourists and transients. The chemist's and the greengrocer's have been replaced by some anonymous electronics shop.

When you walk through the Upper East Side of Manhattan, you are immediately seized by the neighbourhood feel. The areas of central London that we walked through often didn't have that feeling. The pubs and restaurants were busy enough but something was missing. Or maybe we just weren't "getting it".

In our Craven Street building, I never saw or heard another occupant the whole time. When I looked out the windows of our flat in Egerton Gardens, almost all of the windows opposite us (other than the attic-storey flats) were dark at 9 PM. One morning, I walked along our side of that communal garden and saw, through dusty windows, that only one other ground-floor unit was inhabited: the others were all empty or under renovation.

When we walked home from dinner one evening around 9:30, we passed through a posh residential Kensington square where one entire side of the square was blacked out. Where are the people?
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 11:32 AM
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Interesting reading, tedgale.

We used the Travelcard 2-for-1 deals so successfully in 2011 that one of the Travelcards was paid for, cha-ching! We'll take advantage again when we return in July.

Looking forward to more...
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 12:03 PM
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Checking in to travel with you during your London week... very interesting!
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 12:36 PM
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Our sight-seeing shortlist: Knowing how limited our time was, we made one large list of things that interested us, then split it into an "A" list and a "B" list. I didn't expect to do everything on the "A" list and indeed it turned out to be a menu rather than a checklist.

I was not interested in shopping, so that activity does not figure here. I knew I wanted to do some solo wandering and indeed that proved to be one of the most enjoyable activities, when the weather cooperated.

We missed out on some things that had rigid times attached -- for example, theatre matinees, walking tours, choral church services -- because we ended up just slightly short of time.

For the use of other planners, I will provide our personal shortlist of major sites, with annotations. There are a very few names on here that will not be widely familiar but mostly we wanted to re-connect with the major institutions that we had known in the past:

"A" list

British Museum

National Gallery*

Victoria and Albert museum* (their current special exhibition is 200 years of wedding dresses -- not something I wanted to see)

Kensington Palace* (the show "Fashion Rules" is included in the price of admission and includes couture items worn by the young Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret and Diana)

National Portrait Gallery* - a major exhibition has just opened of portraits by John S. Sargent, mostly of friends and professional colleagues. We had hoped to be there one day when the Portrait Choir was performing in the rooms but we couldn't manage it)

Sir John Soane Museum* (the cherry on the icing on the cake of museology)

Geffrye Museum (period rooms assembled in an 18th century suite of almshouses near Hoxton station of the London Overground railway)

As well, my partner wanted to see a show of the very funky work of the celebrated Ghanaian/ Nigerian artist El Anatsui* at the October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, Bloomsbury

The asterisks mark the things that we actually got to see!

"B" list

Tate Britain / Tate Modern (the current big show is "Abstractionism and the Sublime")

Courtauld Gallery (a small, exquisite collection of paintings, mostly Impressionist and post-Impressionist, that was formerly at Home House and is now housed in Somerset House)

Leighton House (the home of Victorian academic painter Lord Leighton; there is a special exhibition of paintings acquired by a single offshore collector, under the title "Victorian Obsession")

Dennis Severs House, 18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields (home of a family of Huguenot silk-weavers from 1724 to about 1900. A meticulously recreated 18th century interior that you enter "as if you have passed through the surface of a painting")

Banqueting Hall, Whitehall (one of Inigo Jones' masterpieces of early 17th century classicism)
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 01:00 PM
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We also had a list of additional activities, of which we succeeded only in doing one -- our visit to the Temple church:

Churches - Temple Church and St. Paul's Cathedral

The Temple church*, where my in-laws used to worship, was begun in 1185 and extended in the 13th century. It was given into the care of the Knights Templar, monks who ministered to Crusaders. It was originally intended to be the site of royal burials but lost out to the Abbey -- there are no royals here. It is now the church of the legal fraternities of the Inner and Middle Temple, two of the four inns of the Inns of Court. On Wednesdays there's a 1 PM organ concert.

My sister and her husband attended the choral evensong at St Paul's (5 PM daily except Sunday) and were disappointed. The church is open to all at this time, whereas you normally must pay a stiff entry fee. Consequently there were many visitors who were not there to worship. The acoustics are such that their voices were magnified and it was actually hard to hear the music. They much preferred the comparable service at Westminster Abbey, where access is much more closely supervised; the atmosphere was superb

Neighbourhoods - Westminster*, Hampstead, Bloomsbury*, St. James's*, Belgravia*

Walking tours -
Jermyn Street Experience (we didn't make it to the tour I'd targeted - Friday at 4:00; the tour leader is an interesting sounding American ex-pat, Dr. Cindy Lawford)

London Walks (I thought of taking a walking tour of Westminster, a favourite neighbourhood that was once one of the direst slums in London, despite its wonderful Georgian buildings. It is now fully recovered, of course )
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 01:10 PM
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ted - did you know that you can take lunch in Middle Temple Hall? apart from being able to hobnob with all the lawyers having lunch, [if that's what floats your boat] it is the site of the first performance of Twelfth Night - perhaps next time.

https://www.middletemple.org.uk/venu...lunch-in-hall/
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 03:05 PM
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That's the sort of insider tip I relish and would like to try out -- thanks annhig
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 03:35 PM
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>

It sounds like nothing has changed since the last time I was there, they were even wanting to charge $5 a beer in what is supposed to be a business class lounge
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 07:15 PM
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Yes, they do charge for alcohol. I'm teetotal nowadays, so it was not an issue for me -- but I felt vicarious outrage for the other patrons of the Lounge.
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 08:19 PM
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I like that you had a 'list that turned out to be a menu rather than a checklist'. And now, you have what's remaining for your next trip! Well done!

Looking forward to more!
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Old Feb 19th, 2015, 08:57 PM
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nice report . . . several of your impressions definitely resonate w/ me.
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Old Feb 20th, 2015, 04:44 AM
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Hi TEDGALE,

"I had forgotten the visual grandeur of London. It is not confined to the 19th century monuments from the heyday of Empire: Kensington Palace, Whitehall and Somerset House predate all that. Moreover, it is grandeur without the grandiosity that mars both Paris and Washington, to my eyes. Now that the grime of decades has at last been cleaned away, the effect of all this richness on the viewer is dazzling."

Wow, you underestimate your powers of expression. That is a beautiful description. Boris would love your report. Looking forward to more...
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